Google Unveils Project Ara Spiral 2 Modular Smartphone

Google on Wednesday revealed the prototype of its Spiral 2 Modular Smartphone at the Project Ara Developers Conference being held in Mountain Week this week. The Smartphone is expected to be launched in the second half of the year in Puerto Rico. The handset will be a part of Google’s pilot program that will allow users to choose their own hardware based on their own interests and needs.

According to Jessica Beavers, a Google Executive, the search giant will partner with a local carrier Open Mobile and a Mexico based carrier Claro to bring the product to the market after the Q2. The smartphones will reportedly be sold from free-standing stores, just like a food truck selling food.

The Search giant chose Puerto Rico as the launch site for Spiral 2 as more than 90 percent of households on the island of 3.7 million people makes use of a cell phone and 77 percent of the population accesses internet through mobile devices.

The Smartphone comes with Tegra K1 and Marvell PXA1928 dual application processors. It has a 720 x 1280 pixels display and inbuilt proximity and light sensors. The Spiral 2 modular Smartphone also comes with a decent 5 Megapixel rear camera. As far as connectivity is concerned, the smartphone offers a microUSB port, Bluetooth support, Wi-Fi and a 3G modem with band 2 Antenna.

On the battery front, the Spiral 2 offers 20%-30% less capacity than an average smartphone. Google has plans of fixing the battery issue in the next version of the Smartphone. According to some reports, the search giant has already started working on Spiral 3.

Spiral 3 is expected to have an improved battery life, a better camera and support 4G LTE connectivity. The Smartphone will apparently use an inductive system for contactless data connections between modules.

The Spiral 2 modular smartphone currently has eleven modules but Google has plans of increasing it to thirty modules by the end of 2015. The new modules will add an improved camera and 4G connectivity to the device.

The cost of the Spiral 2 modular smartphone was not revealed at the conference but it can be expected to cost anywhere between $50- $100.

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